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Forests
mythology, especially, the myth of Ogun. The play significantly reveals, for
the fust time, the playwright's political inclinations, the anxiety he had about
life in general and the hture of his nation in particular. The play emphasises
the need to restore the African cultural identity as a major element of social
development. Nigeria, like Kenya, and any other colonized countries, is a
creation of British imperialism. We can see in Nigeria, the forcible
amalgamation of different people with different languages and widely
diverse cultures. Gifted with the power of foreseeing the future of his
country, Soyinka warns his people of the impending class and factional
conflicts, economic crises and political chaos. He warns the natives about the
fragile arena of the nation state that has gained independence. Though one of
the most fearless among the political activists of African writers involved in
some of the most deadly events in Nigeria, Africa and the world and one
who has suffered terribly from activism, Soyinka has often tried to separate
his commitment to political causes Erom what he considers to be his artistic
vocation. He has never presented his art as a part of this activism. Still in A
Dance of the Forests is discernible the political commitment which leads to
the exposure of the corrupt politicians who destroy the country's unity,
integrity as well as development. In this chapter it is proposed to view A
Dance Of The Forests as a work that projects his dynamic mythic vision,
which also embodies for the first time, his political philosophy. This
philosophy very clearly reveals his philosophy of life. It also gives a broad
hint as to what role a postcolonial citizen shall play to lead his country to
progress.
displays his obsession with truth by talking about death, despair and
disillusionment that await this new-born nation at a time of the highly joyous
occasion of its independence. We fmd here a stroke of bold imagination
which points at the depth and sincerity of Soyinka's vision. Adrian Roscoe
has stressed this aspect in his Mother is Gold "Here indeed was a stroke of
bold imagination that pointed up the breadth, depth and sincerity of vision;
for in a play offered to a nation on the euphoric occasion of its independence,
the immediate victim of the satire is that nation itself; in a play ostensibly
celebrating a country's birth, the talk is all of death, delusion and betrayal"
(220). An intermingling of traditional and Western elements, a juxtaposing
of materials from all cultures; the Christian and the Yourba myths for the
purpose of illustrating his arguments can be observed in the play A Dance of
the Forests is an aesthetic expression of Soyinkas' philosophical
ambivalence, which is actually the pivot of the eclecticism of his theatre.
essence of the past. There was only a celebration of convenient symbols and
trophies fiom the past. On the other hand Soyinka never renounces the
essence of the past. He reacts to it in the most spontaneous and natural
manner. Edward Said, has used a term 'nativism' to indicate the desire "to
celebrate and return to a preimperial unsullied past by rejecting the tradition
of the colonizer". (Kildahl 973). This return to the pre-imperial unsullied
past is an inevitable development in recovering from the oppression and
humiliation of colonialism. But too much veneration of the past is indeed an
obstacle for achieving true liberation. "To remain at a stage of nativism is to
accept the consequences of imperialism, the rural, the religious and political
divisions imposed by imperialism itself. To revaluate the hierarchy is no
escape fiom hierarchical and 'us versus them' thinking" (Kildahl973).
selfishness too. He even questions the decisions of the Gods who are very
callous and harsh in their dealings with men. Mata Kharibu, the hypocrite
ruler and Madame Tortoise, the characterless queen do not stand for an
enviably smooth and glorious past and they do not belong to the past only.
As Eldred Jones has pointed out in his "The Essential Soyinka", "Both men
and gods are arraignment in A Dance of the Forests. Of both the past and the
present, of both men and gods, Soyinka is apt to raise the most embarrassing
questions. This is where his greatest value lies - and his greatest personal
danger; he is an irritant to complacency and a wet blanket to romance." ( l l).
Soyinka would appear to have anticipated what postcolonial theorists like
Gayathri Spivak and V.Y. Mudimbe were to announce years later. His quip
against Negritude and the much discussed A Dance of the Forests are
indicative of this. His essays like "The Future of West African Writing",
"From a Common C l o t h and his plays like Madmen and Specialists also
articulate the argument that "independence does not necessarily mean that
the colonial episteme has been ruptured (Olaniyan 494).
Africa had to suffer under colonial rule for decades. It has not freed
itself fully from the vestiges of colonialism yet. Afi-ican nationalism has
overtaken the colonial powers and has emerged triumphant. But it has yet to
give itself a new direction and order to cope with the complications of the
to face when they took upon themselves the role of the guardians of African
conscience. The primary aim of the artist being the depiction of truth about
living processes, he might choose as his chief target the exposure and
denunciation of falsehood. There defmitely will be problem in contemporary
Africa in the context of colonial heritage. But moral responsibility lies within
the individual as much as in the culture milieu. African literature has
depicted the crisis and contradictions faced by the African people. The
creative writers of Africa have a clear vision of the ideal society for which
they have to combine the best of the old cultural traditions with the
enlightened ideas of the modern world. The African writers have also
expressed their resentment against corruption in the independent African
states, and they have protested against the authoritarian forces which are
trying to misuse the freedom gained from the colonial powers. African poets
and writers have pinpointed the mistakes in human history, and
contemporary African literature is yet another protest against the totalitarian
tendencies and the political groups which hold the humanity in a constant
state of peril. A Dance Of The Forests shows that the modem society is in no
way better than the ancient society, for, in the past as well as in the present,
the plight of the artist as well as the common man remains unchanged.
In his expository book, Myth Literature and African World Soyinka has
discussed the rituals and myths which inspired and conditioned his drama.
His use of rituals in drama offers us a way to transcend the temporal and
draw upon the resources of primal reality. A Dance of the Forests, and The
Road are mature works which employ ritual elements. The author's aim in
these plays is to establish the metaphysical sense of transition between the
present moment and the flux of existence, past, present and future. Soyinka
has been naturally tuned to the Yourba Culture. He has shown great
scholarly interest in it, leading to the formation of theory of Yourba tragedy.
His major works, A Dance of the Forests, The Road, Death and The Kings
Horseman and The Strong Breed and The Bachae of Euripedes all closely
follow the theory of tragedy as developed by him.
Portnoy, ". . . he was the pioneer deity - he was the one who actually
plunged into this abyss of transition, to hack through primordial chaos and
forge a path to man, that is the world of the living" (2). This was an act of
will and the god became the symbol of active creativity. He was the God of
war and poetry. He became the God of the destructive and the creaative
principle thus having in him both the creative and destructive aspects. Ritual
drama, then is the retelling of the Ogun myth. Thus the protagonist in a
drama which draws fiom ritual experience "enters the abyss, the inner world
of primal reality and brings back its essence which he or she communicates
As it has been discussed, the myth of Ogun, the god who risked the
dangers of the abyss and created a road from the spiritual to the human
world, is the key to an understanding of all Soyinka's work. Soyinka argues
that man has a dual nature whether he be African or American. What makes
Soyinka's drama so unique is its metaphysical dimension basedon his
personal rendering of Yoruba myth. It assumes the compartmentalized
existence of three worlds, the world of the dead, the living and the unborn
and the existence of another fourth realm called 'the Fourth Stage'. It is this
realm which links the living with their ancestors and with the future. Soyinka
employs the terms 'transition' for the terrifying experience of the nurninous
fourth stage. Again to quote from his interview, with Jeffi-ey A. Portnoy,
We have seen that it is the story of Ogun that underlies Soyinka's theory and
practice of drama. He is the hero-god who created a passage between gods
and men out of the primordial chaos. But the battle in which he slew not only
his enemies but also his own people in a drunken stupor demonstrated that in
spite of his heroism he could belong to their world as a destroyer also. This
is the logical explanation of the conviction of Soyinka that human history is
naturally that they never appear as a mask but as an integral part of the plays.
"The myths, traditions and rites are integrated as nourishment for his writing,
not as a masquerade costume." (qtd. in Gibbs, Wole Soyinka 25)
A Dance of the Forests was written and performed for the Nigerian
independence celebrations in 1960, an occasion represented in the play as
"the Gathering of Tribes." The play emerged at a significant formative
moment in the history of M i c a . Thejumola Olaniyan describes that @the
purpose of the play is "the celebration of a geopolitical transformation of a
stage in the historic encounter between M i c a and Western W o r l d (489). It
is a highly individualistic play. Its explorations of new visions are as
multidimensional and as diversified as the human psyche itself. With the
exploration of Yoruba myth, Soyinka tries to convince his audience that they
should let go their sleepy state, awaken from their slumber and recover the
values of beauty, order, joy, justice and redemption from the abyss of terror,
humiliation and despair. Only a vision that transcends all conventional
values can lead the country to a healthy future. Gerald Moore remarks in his
article "The Use of Myth, An Examination of African Revolutionary Drama"
aptly thus: "Through A Dance of the Forests Soyinka stresses the need for
along a progressive path by following some great ideals set by the ancestors
and gods. In other words, a newly independent nation has to face the
dilemma as to whether it has to shape its present in line with the past or to
forget the past completely and begin afresh. Wole Soyinka is invoking the
self-determining powers of the colonized people. The moment of gaining
independence, for any nation in that case, is a historical moment, a rare
moment as 'historical and rare', 'an earth changing move from an old world
into a new' "when the soul of a nation, long suppressed finds utterance"
Q/kd
(Ellek
4
Boehmer 181). It is such a moment that is selected by Wole Soyinka
for dramatic treatment in A Dance Of The Forests. But far from expressing it
interviews, and for which (he is) known today" (489). A brief outline of the
Soyinka depicts is based on one of the ancient Sudanic kingdoms fi-om
which the contemporary Yoruba descended. Soyinka calls this world the
court of Mata Kharibu which parallels the contemporary world of the Yoruba
,;h 7L-L
township. It shows that despite their differencesnpast andpresent they share a
continuous pattern of human effort, pain, cruelty and achievement. The
pattern remains unchanged.
The principal divine actor in the play is Forest Father who appears
before the mortals as a man called Obaneji. Through his messenger, Aroni,
Forest Father makes it clear that the two representatives fi-om the past - the
Dead man and the Dead woman - were in previous life linked in violence
and blood with four of the living in the court of Mata Kharibu. These four
people are Rola, Demoke, Adnebi and Agboreko, Elder of the Sealed lips.
Rola, a prostitute was nicknamed Madame Tortoise eternally. Demoke is a
carver now. He was a poet in the empire of Mata Khribu.. Adnebi is the
council orator now and then court historian. Agboreko, Elder of the sealed
lips, is a type of sooth sayer in both existences.
Dead man was the conscientious warrior in his early life and Dead
woman, his pregnant wife. The four are representatives of the living world
drawn into the forests by the Forest Head to let the living condemn
themselves to face the truths about themselves - that they are "perpetrators,
abetters, and accessories of the inhuman order" (Olaniyan 494). They are
meant "to underline the continuity of human nature and the repetition of
history." As Eldred Jones puts it, history is viewed "as a nearly cyclical
movement." Contrary to what the living would like to believe the past was
not glorious or happy, no more glorious and happy than the present is
Nothing has changed. Society and human beings have remained the same.
There was and there is violence. Corruption, pervades. As the Dead Woman
remarks, in the play 'A hundred generations has made no difference / I was a
fool to come' (25).
Demoke, Aroni tells us, has been guilty of killing his apprentice
Oremole, the devotee of Oro, god of punishment and the dead. Demoke felt
jealous of Oremole because he could climb greater heights. This act places
the gods Ogun and Oro, in bitter enmity over Demoke. Ogun is the protector
of Demoke. As it is sung, "the lion never allows any body to play with his
cub / Ogun will never allow his child to be punished." Demoke intensifies
the anger and hostility of Oro by carving araba tree, the silk cotton tree
sacred to Oro, god of punishment and the dead. Hence Oro decides to take
revenge upon Demoke through one of his own aspects, Eshuoro, 'the way
ward flesh of Oro.'
The climactic action which gives the play its title is the dance. It is a
spectacular masque in which the fate of the woman's long unborn child, the
Half-child, is decided. Through the intervention of Ogun, the half child is
restored to the woman thereby redeeming the bloody cycle of history.
Demoke takes this challenging decision. His daring action is the climbing of
the totem he has carved because he has a fear of heights. Again with Ogun's
help he survives Eshuoro's attempt at revenge. The play closes with a
reunion of the living which hints at a possible human reformation as a result
of Demoke's action. What is suggested is that an individual's action of
daring and courage will definitely save a country from falling into the depths
The central play-within-the play takes all the characters back to the
ancient court of the warrior-king, Mata Kharibu. It draws parallels between
each of the crimes committed by the human beings in the present with an
ancient equivalent crime committed in a previous life. In the present,
Demoke, the carver of trees, has murdered his apprentice out of jealousy for
his climbing ability. In the past, as a court poet he was responsible for the
death of his novice whom he pushed down from the roof of the palace. Rola,
the present day courtesan, responsible for the deaths of two of her lovers, had
in her previous incarnation as Madame Tortoise caused similar tragedy
among her palace guards. Adenebi accepts a bribe in the present to pass the
lorry Incinerator' as suitable for carrying seventy passengers when it was
only designed for forty. In this action, we find the folly being repeated, the
folly of his previous life where too he had accepted a bribe fiom the slave
dealer.
thus: 'Down, down I plucked him, screaming on Oro.1 Before he made hard
obeisance to his earth./ My axe was executioner at Oro's neck. Alone./
Alone, I cut the strands that mocked me, till dead. And boastful slave lay
side by side, and I Demoke, sat on the shoulders of the tree./ My spirit set
fiee and singing, my hands. My father's hands possessed by demands of
blood" (27).
While, the townsfolk, far away, are intent upon 'the gathering of the
tribes' the Forest Father is making all necessary arrangements for the self
recovery of the dead and the living. There are three parts for the ceremony.
First is the enactment of the scene in the empire of the African emperor Mata
Kharibu and his Queen Madame Tortoise which took place eight centuries
ago. It also reveals the integrity and heroism of the warrior who was
emasculated and enslaved for being loyal to his curious concept of honour.
This leads to the tragic plight of his faithful wife who collapses hearing
about his punishment The second scene is the questioning of the dead pair.
They give an account of themselves and of the reasons for their presence
there. The Dead Woman regards herself as a symbol of all mothers cheated
by death of her fulfilment: "Wet runnels. / Of the earth brought me hither I
call Forest Head. Say someone comes. For all the rest. Say someone asks - 1
Was it for this, for this. Children plagued their mothers? (60). She is relieved
of the burden, but she is delivered of only a half child. The third part of the
ceremony is the Dance of welcome of the Dead, which the living have
refused to perform. The three mortals are masked and through these masks
speak the spirits of the unborn - spirits of the palm, the Darkness and the
Waters. They are respectively Rola, Demoke and Adenebi. The Dead Man,
Woman and Half-child want to know whether the future ages will offer that
gleam of light refused by the past and the present.
Two beautiful poetic passages fiom Soyinka are worth quoting here.
To branded wombs.
There ensues a scene of great excitement and tension in which the half child
is tossed to and fro by the Triplets. It is Demoke who puts an end to this
moment by handing the half child to the Dead Woman, thereby hoping to
save him from being eternally ground by the wheel of birth and death. The
final words of the forest father, as he closes the dance, suggested that
Demoke may have opened a way for his own redemption.
In the final scene, the villagers are dancing round a silhouette of the totem
carved by Demoke. Eshuoro forces Demoke to climb the carved totem
carrying a sacrificial basket on his head. The basket represents the burden of
his own guilt. Demoke, as he falls down from the totem, which had been set
fue by Esuhuoro, is saved by Ogun. Ogun leaves him on the forestage.
Demoke's father comes there to fmd three chastened mortals just awakening
to themselves. The meaning of the central event of the play appears to be
ambivalent and Wole Soyinka seems to suggest that the modern Africans
need not depend totally on the past and the ancestors, but accept the
responsibility of owning up their actions, improving their life independently
and shaping their future properly. Soyinka is very ambiguous about the
future of the country, because of corruption in bureaucracy, exploitation of
countless citizens, etc. The only way to improve the future of the country is
through the spiritual awakening and expiation of their sins and crimes.
A Dance Of The Forests, like Death and the King's Horseman, The
Road, The Strong Breed, and other plays closely follows the theory of
tragedy formulated by Soyinka which is centered on the myth of Ogun. This
is the only play in which Ogun is given a prominent role to play in the form
of a human being. To quote Jonathan A Peters: "Soyinka's fascination with
Ogun is very much in view in A Dance Of The Forests, the only play in
which the god takes form as a character and an important one, in the
unfolding drama" ( 163).
"The Fourth Stage", an essay that interprets the myth of Ogun, discusses the
three stages of Ogun's nature, 'the crossing of the primordial marsh', the
disastrous battle on behalf of the people of Ire and his descent and settlement
in Ire. In the interpretation of the rituals of Ogun's worshippers, Soyinka
sees the Ogun's 'crossing of the primordial marsh' reenacted. The tragic
victim struggles with a sense of disintegration in the abyss. He is also
endowed with the power of having visions. He is gifted with an acute
awareness of birth and death. Thus he becomes the spokesman of God, 'the
unresisting mouth piece of god (Gibbs, "The Origin" 67) whose action
transforms his anguish into creative purpose. He is now totally fiee fiom the
destructive despair. Ogun is Soyinka's patron god. So he relates these
patterns of Ogun's exploits with his own as a Yoruba tragic dramatist.
Soyinka suggests that the dramatist begins with the protagonists "stripped of
his excrescences, crushed and robbed of his self consciousness" (Myth 151).
The protagonist experiences the dissolution of self in the abyss. But by an
exercise of will he is able to triumph over subsummation and he emerges
with the sensitivity of the artist.
changed. But no more than the Forest Head, can the playwright propose any
solution to the spectators: The play ends in uncertainty on both levels. This is
intentionally done by the author and he refuses to offer a defmite
denouement. R. Fraser points out that there are four alternative endings to
the play. But no clear message is conveyed as to what should be done. The
Forest Head is incapable of taking any decisions for the human beings. The
playwright is incapable of deciding for the audience. The only thing they can
do is to give an opportunity to the human beings or the spectators to become
aware of the need for a change.
him both the creative and the destructive aspects. He is a carver and thereby
a creator. When he tries to climb the araba tree with a sacrificial basket on
his head, he is facing the dangers of disintegration. By plucking Oremole
down from the araba tree and by murdering him he has proved himself to be
a prey to the violent destructive aspects in Ogun. To quote Gerald Moore
2
all those who venture into the gulf of transition. His fall from the
elucidate the general meaning of A Dance of the Forests. Soyinka told him
that "a play does not have to be understood, that it should be responded
through the pores of the skin and that the playwrights' ambition should be to
propose exciting theatre and if possible to set a riddle which would keep the
audience thinking" (qtd. in Richard 80).
Soyinka has tried to defme the ultimate purpose of drama in his essay,
"Drama and the Idioms of liberation" frst published in 1975:
Soyinka believed that the interaction of the audience and the protagonistic
forces on the stage will defmitely lead to positive results and that drama will
succeed in provoking in the audience "a resumed awareness" of the
contemporary situation. The fact is that a certain influence of Bertolt Brecht,
the German playwright, and his concept of the epic theatre can be traced in
the approach of Soyinka towards his works. The figure of Berthold Brecht is
bound to loom large in any consideration of dramatic theory in the twentieth
century. Brecht's theory of the epic theatre and the principle of alienation
influenced many writers and theorists of many different schools. He raised
the fundamental question of what the theatre was for. He believed in the
theory of alienating the audience from the actors on the stage so that their
rational, critical faculties are activated. He believed that this will defimitely
succeed in bringing about the social change he desired. So, instead of
accepting any straight forward, ready-made progressive message, the
spectators are enabled to objectively evaluate the contemporaneous
situations.
exist. The structure of the play as well as the handling of the plot clearly
illustrate the influence of Brechts' critical theory where he proposes that the
'illusion of reality of a work should be deliberately shattered by an episodic
plot, by protagonists who do not attract the audience's sympathy, by a
striking theatricality in staging and acting, and by other ways of baring the
artifice of drama so as to produce an alienation effect". (Abrams 150). Like
Brecht, Soyinka too employs theatricality in staging, a loose episodic plot
structure and chooses not a flawless hero but a protagonist who fails to
arouse the sympathy of the audience. By producing this alienation effect,
Soyinka is able to jerk the audience out of their passive roles; He succeeds in
making them critical towards the modern society and encourages an active
involvement with the forces in a society which may lead to a change for the
better. For him, the future is predicated by the present, the present is clarified
by the past. If the present is inadequate, the future will be too.
postcolonial milieu.
gulf of transition and to restore unity and order. Brim Crow's remark in his
I/
article "Empowering the people: African Theatre and Neocolonialism is
worth quoting here": "Its cultural function is the supremely important one of
providing the means through the skill and will of the actor - protagonist to
bridge the gulf of transition for the participant audience and thus to restore to
it an experience of disrupted existential unity and order" (78).
The spiritual interdependence between the past, the present and the future in
the community of Yoruba Cosmology, the interdependence between the
three historical actual and prospective planes of entity is also suggested
powerfully through A Dance of the Forests. According to Soyinka, "the true
African sensibility establishes that the past exists in the present, it is co-
existent in present awareness. It clarifies the present and explains the future"
rl
("The Writer 19)). Soyinka was not the kind who ignored the past. He was
aware of the validity of the past. That is evident enough from his interest in
African mythology. But he also believed that the past must address the
present and the writer should live in the present and work for the future.
Ogunbeshan gives a very relevant comment about this in his article "Wole
Soyinka, The Past and the Visionary Writer":
Soyinka does not attempt to recreate the past for the purpose of
enshrinement, nor does he stress merely the cultural continuity.
Unlike Achebe who is nostalgic about the past, Soyinka focuses
more directly on the dilemmas of the living to enable him to
It will not be inappropriate to point out at this context the aspect of post
colonial cultural politics with which Soyinka is concerned: history and
responsibility. A Dance of the Forests repeatedly emphasizes the privileged
position occupied by the past in the understanding of the present and the
construction of future. He warns his people that past should not be observed
with detachment. For an African, it is difficult to accept a neutral attitude
towards history, to remember it with detachment. Discussing this aspect in A
0 0
Dance @f The Forests, and making a comparison between A Dance 8f The
Forests and Drums and Colours written by Derek Walcott, Tejumola
Olaniyan points out certain this differences between them. Agreeing that
both of them foreground traditional elements like rituals, dances etc. he
remarks:
8
In A Dance f The Forests, the living do provide a continuity with the past.
They can indeed hope to break the sordid pattern of their history through the
awareness they gain. But Soyinka seems to give this warning that the pattern
remains unchanged. To quote Jonathan A. Peters,
totem but also in the double lives of the characters, in the acts of
violence they commit and in the complex symbo
Abiku child during the rites of welcome (170).
497). Demoke, the carver, is the most sensitive of the three. He represents
the creative spark for the gathering. In his previous life too he was an artist, a
bard, a professional aestheticizer of tyranny in the despotic court of Mata
Kharibu. He has scarified in his present life, the life of his apprentice,
Oremole. But he later confesses his guilt in a long speech. Demoke~
symbolizes the role an artist has to play in society. An artist, though guilty of
his venial crime, can defmitely assist his people in learning from his
mistakes and then in opening a pathway towards salvation.
and court historian as represented in the kingdom of Mata Kharibu who ruled
eight centuries ago. By suggesting that the past was equally inglorious as the
present, Soyinka is emphasizing the universal cycle of human violence. The
view point upheld by Adenebi and the old man that the past is known for
accumulated cultural heritage and that it has only illustrious ancestors creates
a feeling of nostalgia. It is an Edenic past that symbolizes all that is noble in
past history. But in actual life, Soyinka suggests, "their assemblage of
illustrious people is always equalled by a corresponding gallery of infamous
rogues and villains" (Peters 177).
It becomes obvious that even before Soyinka became famous for his
tiger - tigritude quip he had expressed in A Dance Of The Forests his anger
at the preoccupation of his people with past greatness. It is through the
agency of Mata Kharibds' court that Soyinka seeks to demonstrate the
inglorious side of the African heritage. We learn that the Dead Man was a
warrior who refused to lead men to a war he considered unjust. He has got
the courage to tell the physician of the court that the war Kharibu orders him
to fight is an unjust war only to recover the trousseau of a stolen wife. His
courageous streak becomes must obvious in another conversation with the
(49).
is the only consistency that past ages afford us. It is the legacy which new
nations seek to perpetuate. Patriots are grateful for wars. Soldiers have never
questioned bloodshed. The cause is always the accident, your majesty, and
war is the Destiny. This Man is a traitor" (57). The warrior's wife, Dead
woman, died of the shock of the punishment inflicted upon her husband:
castration and slavery. This is the glorious past which the humans intend to
celebrate Jonatham Peters remarks thus: "Kharibu' S unconscionable
indulgence in a futile war lays bare another ignoble aspect of the African
past and calls in question the exclusive glorification of the traditional African
heritage and cult~u-e"(179). It also suggests that in the contemporary scene
also there is much scope for meaningless wars. "A Dunce thus is famous for
v
its exorcism of what the author sees as the 'boring romanticism of the Negro'
(Soyinka "The Future" 14). It is unsparing in its condemnation of the present
too.
Wole Soyinka knew that the present age is also beset by corrupt
statesmen and unjust men of justice. Confronted with the impotence of the
elite, the corruption of leaders and men of justice, Soyinka did not know
where to turn. He preached that lessons should be learned from the past and
should be used for the construction of the future.
From what has been analysed in the foregoing pages, it becomes clear
that in creating A Dunce Of The Forests, the political situation of 1960 has
played an important role. The present - the gaining of independence -
provides an admirable vantage point from which history can be reviewed and
reinterpreted. The motivation for such reinterpretation arises out of the need
to understand the present itself, situated as it is in the context of history. This
is one of the concerns among many others of what is currently known as
"post-colonial discourses" Frantz Fanon through work, The Wretched of the
Earth has argued that anticolonial movements would fail unless they
addressed the issue of the survival after decolinisation. Critically, from both
0
these points of view, the play A Dance Of The Forests does deserve to be
listed among the postcolonial New Literatures of the day. It is a key
document in the development of the European as well as African awareness
of the condition of the colonised as decolonisation proceeded.
A Dance Of The Forests with its chastising of the past, and the
exposition of the lust for power excellently proves that Soyinka does not
have a blind veneration of the past. He has exposed the hypocrisy of the
rulers of the past; he has criticized the new rulers as they ignore the urgent
problems of the present on which "the poets have lately taken to gun running
and writers are heard of holding up radio stations."A writer has to gain
authenticity through an activism concentrating on the present. Only then he
becomes relevant. An African writer has been irrelevant as long as "he was
content to turn his eye backwards in time and prospect in archaic fields for
e
forgotten gems which would dazzle and distract the present" (Fmser 563).
The writer becomes relevant when he truthfully depicts the present realities
and creates a kind of self-awareness in the minds of his people. Soyinka
never had a blind nostalgic attitude towards the past. Neither did he think
that gaining independence would immediately make the nation free of all
exploitative tendencies as shown by the colonizers. He warns his countrymen
0
of the problems which the country has to face. A Dance @f The Forests,
gives a warning to the Africans that the country has to be ready to face
problems like hypocrisy, corruption and betrayal from their new rulers too.
taught as natural or true" (23). Wole Soyinka warns his people through A
Dance af The Forests about internal colonisation. They are given a chance
through Demoke, Rola and Adenebi and through their past incarnations to
know that what they have been taught as glorious or true are just the
opposite.
One of the reasons for the failure of the new nation to develop freely
into a stable and developed one may be that national resistance to
imperialism itself derives its notion of nation from the Western culture it is
resisting. As the well renowned colonial theorist, Gayathri Spivak points out,
as the product of imperialism, nationalism succeeds only in changing "the
geo-political conjucture from territorial imperialism to neo-colonialism" ("In
Other Woas", 245). She is aware of the fact that the national governments
may, in resisting the imperialist governments, follow the same pattern of
socio-political hierarchy which was popularised by colonialist philosophy.
society. It is important that the new independent nation frees itself from the
impact of colonization. It is here that the significance of the myths comes in.
As C. Vijayasree remarks: "The myths do refer to a society's traditional
ability to live with cultural diversities. The myths can be used to build
psychological and even metaphysical defence against cultural erosion." (39).
Soyinka has made clear in Myth, Literature and African World the
significant role of the myths in shaping the future of a nation. Colonialism
definitely causes psychological and cultural distortions. So, as a starting
point of the revolutionary processes, in a postcolonial Afiican society, there
must be "a reinstatement of the values authentic to that society, modified
only by the demands of a contemporary world." (Myth X).
Gilbert puts it, "the folkloric background is represented, reflected on, given a
cultural thrust; (and so) raised to the level of consciousness, it emerges as a
new form of self critical culture." (Gilbert and Tompkins 86). This faculty
for self-evaluation, and the self-reflective criticism, is one of the prominent
traits of postcolonial literature.
So, we can say that Soyinka has redefined tradition as resistance here.
that they share similar styles and approaches, have dealt with the same basic
themes, and gone through much the same phases of development. The most
traumatic event in the life of the African people was the European aggression
and occupation of Africa. The long years of shame and humiliation under
foreign rule, the long strenuous struggle for liberation, experiments of
dictatorial governments with self rule after the attainment of independence
represents the stage where the works reflect 'the revulsion against
colonialism and a reassertion of indigenous cultural values,' A Dance Of The
Forests represents the second phase which expresses the awareness of the
experience and its aftermath. They are also a clear reflection of the
awareness of the author about the efforts made by the African writers to seek
his roots in the pre-colonial past. After a close reading of his works, this fact
ke
becomes obvious) He was totally against judging African world and its
literature using Western theories. He knew that they were derived from the
apprehension of Western theories. He knew that they were derived from the
which very clearly reflects the basic themes and the same phases of
development as any other work of the postcolonial literatures. It clearly
depicts the euphoria of gaining independence from the British rulers along
with expressing revulsion against colonialism. It consists of a passionate
reassertion of indigenous cultural values. It is a truthful revelation of the
disillusionment that awaits the new rulers and the jubilant people who are
drunk with excitement. It is also a grim warning of the gruesome future
which will definitely threaten people with its sense of alienation and
estrangement. It warns them of being drawn to an age of disillusionment,
silence or further explosion of anger and radicalism.
for the new man or the new world to emerge all on a sudden. To quote Albert
Memmi," And the day oppression ceases, the new man is supposted to
emerge before our eyes immediately. Now I do not like to say so but I must,
catp
since d e d i z a t i o n has demonstrated it. This is not the way it happens. The
colonized lives for a long time before we see that really new man" (88).
Soyinka gives the same message to his country men through the play. His
C)
puts it:
Many critics have blamed Soyinka for the density and complexity of his
plays. They accuse him of being eurocentric and of writing his plays mainly
resistance. So, Wole Soyinka's texts are potentially subversive even when he
employs the language, vocabulary, forms and norms of English. As Ellek
Without rejecting the West completely Soyinka combined the best of his
own culture with some of the techniques of the West. To quote Meenakshi
Sharma, "Such appropriation and absorption by grafting upon native
traditions is another way of refusal of cultural dependency" (78).
In showing the relationship between the past and the present, Soyinka
makes use of several major symbols like bridges, domes, circles and the
rainbows. A predominant role is played by festivals too. The Strong Breed
centers upon the festival of the New Year. In A Dance of the Forests, the
central action is the gathering of the tribes. In The Road, the kernel is an
event that happened at the last annual Driver's festival. Kongi's Harvest is
centered around the festival of New Yam. All these plays illustrate the
various devices employed by Soyinka to create an emotionally charged
atmosphere that helps the spectators to feel to come near God. The principal
external features of the festivals are drumming, singing, dancing, feasting
and sacrifice. Poetic songs and prayers are sung. Dances are performed,
sacrifices are offered and pent up spirits are released. Through these devices
he intends to make the effect extremely exciting and very lasting. Robert
Mac Dowel explains Soyinka's stage devices and their effect upon the
audience most appropriately:
Yoruba festivals play a prominent role in Soyinka's plays. The plays like A
Dance of the Forests, Kongi's Harvest, and The Strong Breed have an
overall design of a festival. It is typical of a festival that it causes excitement.
Celebration as well as tension prevail everywhere. This tension in the
atmosphere is increased by such devices like drumming and music. Oyin
Ogunba observes,
thinks of nothing but the great event. This is the atmosphere that
prevails when important ceremonies are performed in traditional
Africa and Soyinka in these plays very often catches the essence
actual carnival. The medieval carnival represented second life for the
common people. Its political significance lies in this that it upturned the
orthodox hierarchy and positions. Again to quote Katherine Clark, "The
suspension of all hierarchical precedence during carnival time was of
To quote Pam Morris, "Carnival was the true feast of time, the feast of
becoming, change and renewal. It was hostile to all that was immortalized
and completed. The familiar communication of the people in carnival time
lacks the essentials, the all-human character, the festivity, utopian meaning,
philosophical depth" (199).
There is a view that A Dance of the Forests does not project very clearly the
traditional festival model as his other plays like Kongis' Harvest and The
Strong Breed do. But the ideas of the welcoming of the Dead, the illustrious
ancestors, and the gathering of the Tribes suggest a Yoruba Egungun
festival. It is the celebration of a good event, independence, and it produces
great excitement to the whole nation. But here again, as in Kongi's Harvest,
the underlying hint is that there is nothing to rejoice about. The joyous
atmosphere is only superficial. The past has been one of opportunism and the
future is also going to be bleak with suffering and death. So the festival is
averted and A Dance of the Forests which had begun as a celebration of a
joyous occasion and a gathering of the tribes rapidly becomes a dance of
death.
burial and revival. Similarly we find a suspension of all hierarchical rank and
privileges and a free mingling and free mixing and frank interaction between
people of different ranks and order. The Orthodox hierarchy is suspended
and upturned in the community of Yoruba cosmology in which are coeval
the three historical, actual and prospective planes of entity. There is the free
coexistence of the supernatural, the human beings, the dead ones and even
the unborn. We find the human beings intervening in the actions of the gods
as Demoke does with Eshuoro or the Gods interfering with human affairs. It
is only in such a carnival, a dance of the forests, where a temporary
suspension of both real and the ideal hierarchical rank is created that a
special communication is possible. To quote Helen Gilbert and Joanne
Tompkins, "Carnival is thus suitable as a model for p o s t ~ o l o n i a l
representations of the body politic that seek to dismantle the hierarchised
corpus of imperial culture" (80).
that threatens to loosen the grip of the authority and move (2t towards equality
and uniformity. So in other terms, "the carnival constantly reconstructs the
docile (colonised) body as an unruly (resisting) body that threaten to loosen
institutionalised authority's grasp on representation." (Gilbert and Tompkins
86).
specific to the context and culture in which they are used. Masks are used to
create archetypes and to help establish ancestral links. Masks are not used in
a drama just for aesthetic purposes. It has got considerable spiritual power
for the wearer. A mask may conceal the real identity of the wearer. But it
reveals many significant meanings like the site of culture, its power and
importance outside the context of the play. The use of ritualized mask is
highly crucial in the postcolonial context because its usage in Afiican texts
signifies a move away fiom the coloniser and a return to the roots. Perhaps
this has been very aptly explained in Postcolonial Theory.
While a mask conceals the face of the actor, it also reveals the site
of culture, and the significance and power invested in the mask
outside the context of the play. In contemporary Afiican texts, the
events past and present and between the characters, human and supernatural.
in
Abiola Irele rernarks,"Traditions and the Yomba writer, D.O. Fagunwa,
Amios Tutuola and Wole Soyinka", "The myth of artist as it developed in
Soyinka's writings rests on an idea of his role as the mediator of the inner
truths that sustain the collective life, and on his function in renewing the
fundamental values that govern it." (63).
very society they seek to save. They frequently end up as the victims of the
society which benefits from their vision." (Ogungbesan, "Wole Soyinka and
the Novelists' Responsibility" 6)
Interpreters and The Season of Anomy and the artists like Demoke as being
bestowed with the power of leading the people of their society. They wake
up in order to revitalize society. Kola Wole Ogungbesan observes.
The writer has to remain true to what he believes in. Only then can he
function as the conscience of his society. But this independence of spirit was
not encouraged by rulers neither of the past nor of the present. For the
despotic rulers, the possession of a questioning mind was like an abominable
feature as malignant and killing as "thought-cancer". Soyinka has
meaningfully drawn the picture of the empire of Matakharibu, as the shrine
of historic magnificence Such a glorious empire has a whore as a queen and
a tyrant as a king. This tyrant fears independent minds and is eager to destroy
intellectual powers. He has no principles. Soyinka is now the true artist who
with courage raises a questioning eyebrow at the romanticized concept that
people have of the past and thereby of the future of their country. So at one
level, "the play is a debunking of the nationalistic fervors of the times, with
its romanticizing of what the Council Orator refers to as "the accumulated
heritage ... Mali, Chaki, Songhai, Glory, Empires7, where as the flashback
shows Mata Kharibu, one of the most 'glorious' of the emperors, as a blood
- thirsty tyrant who kills his sevants or sells them to slave traders, and wages
unjust wars." (Phelps 8:340).
A section of the dialogue between Mata Kharibu and the sooth sayer
is quite expository in its nature.
But he is not even man for that. What does it mean? What do
you see for me in the future? Will there be more like him
born with this thought cancer in their heart.
recurrent features of human nature. The view that is projected is that "the
cyclic movement of history churns up very much the same manifestation of
evil down the ages" (David 62).
ever altered. Only Demoke the artist, murderer, and follower of Ogun, can be
said to have learned anything - that he must accept his destructive as well as
his creative instincts. And his offering to the celebrations is the totem pole
which soars upwards. This pole, symbolic of the passage which Ogun had
once made between the gods and man, is the only one creation which has any
validity.
patron God Ogun. The arguments is that this contradictory nature in Demoke
transforms him into a new artist and provides him with a new insight into
things. To quote Abiola Irele,
undergoing three phases in his role of analysing and leading his society.
These are in keeping with Fanon's concept of the intellectual as is analysed
in The Wretched of the Earth. The fnst phase is a period when the
intellectual assimilates the culture of the ruling power. After this feeling of
estrangement from the native culture, the next phase awakens in him an
awareness about the new reality, about the greatness of his culture. The third
phase is the fighting phase when the intellectual accepts the role of the
awakener. Demoke, like the other artists, undergoes these three stages and
finally succeeds in guiding the tribe through the proper way.
lurking below all its surface, pomp and majesty are disturbing
traits, bestial and violent-of human nature, the whoring of Mata
Kharibu's queen, the corruption of his Historian, the selling of the
soldier and his sixty men and slaves, the machinations of Madame
Tortoise against her new lord and the total lack of feeling and
compassion by men of power who engulf their subjects and lesser
compatriots in meaningless wars" (Peters 179).
Dead man as a warrior in his previous life in the court of Mata Kharibu
predicts about the cannibalistic nature of human beings 'Cannibalism' has
become an important metaphor in postcolonial literatures for demonstrating
the process by which imperial Europe distinguishes itself fiom and the
colonized subjects and provides a justification for that expansion.
Cannibalism which has different connotations is present in all aspect
of life. Cannibalism is present in the innate wicked nature of human beings;
it is present in exploitation, war, betrayal and murder. It is there in "the
brother eating - brother" morality in a wicked society. Soyinka has
repeatedly emphasized his conviction that human beings are simply
cannibals.
Of The Forests itself there is the example of the historian who insists that
war is necessary to reclaim the queen's wardrobe from her former husband.
He says about the history of Troy: "And who was the inspiration of this
divine carnage? Helen of Troy, a woman whose honour because is as rare a
conception as her beauty. Would Troy, if it were standing today, lay claim
to preservation in the annals of history if a thousand had not been
slaughtered behind its gates and a hundred thousand Trojans within her
walls" (5 1).
behind the creation of A Dance of the Forests: "I fmd that the main thing is
my own personal conviction or observation that human beings are simply
cannibals all over the world so that their main preoccupation seems to be
eating up one another. This I think is the main thing I would say was in the
back of my mind when I wrote it" (l'l3). The different portraits of A Dance
Of The Forests elucidate this argument of the author. The bestial nature and
brutality, selfishness and hypocrisy and the lust for power have been satirsed
through all the characters present here. Through the ancient emperor Mata
Kharibu, the dead warrior, Demoke Adenebi, and Rola - Soyinka conveys
this inclination of the human beings to betray one another. Similarly, the ants
and The triplets-End, Greater Cause and Posterity-also point at the base
intentons and self-deception inherent in man. The ants "emphasise the
ultimate fragility and futility of human endeavour since man never learns
from the lesson of the past" (Peters 168). The vigour with which the
historian justifies the war fought for the trousseau of the queen is noticable in
the modem dictators too who resort to war at the slightest provocation. They
quote so many utilitarian principles like progress, civilisation, democracy
and the like to defend the massacre of the people in a war. But these
references to "the good to come" (Peters 178) are yet another indication of
Again, bribery is another evil practice that goes with political powers.
One evil supports and perpetuates another evil in feudal bureaucracy. This
was true in the past as it is true in the present. When Mata Kharibu
highhandedly decides to sell a few soldiers as slaves to a slave-dealer, the
Historian objects to it on the ground that the slave-dealer's bark is too small
to contain the large number of slaves. But when the slave-dealer bribes him
profusely, he alters his tone. The slave dealer tells the physician: "My new
vessel is capable of transporting the whole of Kharibu's court to hell when
that time does come. The Honourable Historian here can testify to it. I took
him abroad. . . . (Behind his back, he passes a bag of money to the historian,
who takes it, feels it and pockets it). . . . only this afternoon and showed him
every plank and rope. . . . ask him yourself' (54).
like their forebears did, just exploit the people. I was interested in
taking another look at that history and saying "The epigraph
should be tempered by the reality of the internal history of
oppression.' In other words I thought that Independence should be
a sobering look at history, not just euphoria and so on (68).
(Progressive 367).
suggest a link between Demoke and the author himself. Demoke was
commissioned to carve a totem to the ancestors where as Soyinka was
commissioned to produce a play that will project a glorious tradition. Just as
his dramatic hero is 'Ogun incarnate,' his political vision also draws much
from the concept of Ogun. Simon Obik Peko Umukro observes,
Again, the quest of the hero for justice is another aspect of Ogun. Ogun hero
fights for justice. In A Dance of the Forests Dernoke is faced with the
difficult question of fmding the rightful owner of half-child, the Dead
Woman or Eshuoro. He restores justice by giving the child back to its own
mother. The interpretation is stretched to the point of comparing the Dead
Woman to Nigeria and Eshuoro to the power of Britain. Like Ogun, the
Ogun hero, Demoke destroys and creates life. He murders Oremole. He
saves the half child from Eshuoro's violence. Though he destroys, he creates.
The main motive that inspires the dramatic hero is the restoration of justice.
Ogun is eager to dispense with humane, restorative justice. This is a primary
concern of Soyinka's dramatic heroes too. 'Moral Scheme' of the hero,
which has to do with justice is another aspect of the Ogun hero which offers
insight into Soyinka's political vision.
Soyinka suggests through Demoke, who hands over the child to its
mother, that "all creative responses in the postcolonial period needs to be
Demoke gives the half child to the Dead Woman. Hence Soyinka
suggests that the suitable political system for Nigeria should not be foreign.
It should be indigenous. "Soyinka suggests that for proper political
development Nigeria should adopt a political system which is indigenous
and primordial; and he charges his compatriots to fmd that system"
(Umukoro 181).
more fatal to the future of the country. Alan Jacobs has given an effective
explanation: "His (Soyinka's) contempt for 'the colonizing hordes,' whether
'Eurochristian or Arab - Islamic' knows no bounds, but he is equally
contemptuous when he turns his gaze on his fellow Africans. Wherever he
turns, he sees folly, hypocrisy, medacity, ineptitude, corruption and sadism.
He is a humanist disgusted by humanity." L 27) A
They (the first set of legislators) could not wait to return home and
get a slice of 'independence cake7, because that was all
independence meant to them. Step fast into the shoes of departing
whites before other people got there. It was then that I began to
write A Dance of the Forests, which takes a jaundiced view of the
recognized for what they are - common felons, and thieves - for
what they have done is to steal from a common resource that was
entrusted to them, and convert it into an instrument of subjugation
against the collective owners ( 3 ) ,
With these barbs aimed at the power-crazy people of Nigeria who could
of the political ideologies by Soyinka himself. Politics was thrust upon him
because he was born into an unstable and disturbed society. Hence his works
contain some of the most powerful critiques of political, social and cultural
practices. Throughout we see that similar attempts are made to absorb
political and social realities into an imaginative pattern which will give them
meaning and at the same time accommodate creativity. When these political
ideas enter his major plays, they are reshaped by transplanting them from the
Nobody can say he's never been through moments of intense pain
or feeling Nigerian this very moment that I'm talking looks at his
country and does not experience absolute despondency (qtd. in
Jeyifo XVII).
These words record Soyinka's anxiety and concern for the political health of
the new Nigeria. Eldred Jones has summed up Soyinka's message to the
Africans and also to the whole world, in his article "The Essential Soyinka":
"The message is to all men whether they fight with words or with nuclear
weapons. It is the warning of the court Historian of the court of Mata
Kharibu reenacted (123). It is a warning about the exploitative tendency of
man.
Soyinka is primarily a satirist. His gift for satire has been employed
mainly at the service of his essentially tragic vision of life. Soyinka uses his
weapon very effectively. The satiric turn of mind makes the play interesting
as well as thought provoking. It depicts an atmosphere which is horrifying
and pathetic. "Soyinka's satiric vision is a curious affair, partly Swift's,
savage indignation, partly the Conradian 'horror' and partly the
Wordsworthian lament over what man has made of man" (Peters 227). A
Dance of the Forests can be termed as the most complex satirical play of
Soyinka. Soyinka possesses the satirist's passionate and almost pathological
obsession for truth. A Dance of the Forests is a message for those who stand
in the present and drug themselves with memories of former glories like the
Orator Adenebi. He intends the play as a timeless warning for the natives. F.
Odun Balogun has remarked like this: "The depiction of repeatedly
reincarnating corrupt, selfish, dishonest exploitative leadership from the
history of the Tribe was nothing but a prediction of disaster should the post-
independence leadership fail to depart radically from the negative pattern of
it" (5 14). But he was not without hopes. No doubt he observes reality. But he
never evokes reality to create despair and disillusionment. He evokes reality
as a means of provoking positive action against the power syndrome that is
at the heart of the reversal of progress.
What Soyinka the artist does here is that he satirises the existing
bestial situation of the world and provides a deep awareness in the minds of
the people as to the existing situation in the world. For this, he has to assert
his will. But there is a slight contradiction in the fm conviction of the
assertion of the artists' will and the awareness of the cycle of tyranny.
Kolawole Ogungbesan observes,
There is a warning that future prospects of mankind are not very bright. But
faint glimmers of hope are noticeable in the otherwise gloomy atmosphere.
The stage directions point out that the play ends when "it's fully dawn".
Dawn is symbolic of a new day, new cycle and the idea of regeneration.
Towards the end of the play, Rola has attained self awareness or liberation to
a certain extent. Demoke exemplifies the argument that collective change
and salvation can be brought by those individuals who learn how to exercise
their free will. Other works of Soyinka also clarify this point. His collection
of poems Iclanre highlights Soyinka's attitude towards life. As Bruce King
points out,
Soyinka wanted to enlighten his people about their present situation and to
Q
inspire them to work for a democracy. My struggle is a democratic struggle
in order to re-empower the people so that they will be the given choice and
the opportunity to participate. It is a struggle to terminate the tendency of
dictatorship in Nigeria" (Kreisler 10).
existed between the historical roots of ritual and its function both in the
community and in the individual who belonged to that community.
image of the half child is highly symbolic. Soyinka sees the abiku child as
both 'a metaphor for the phenomenon of creativity' and 'an expression of
doom' ("Climates" 258). Taking it as a symbol of the 'doomed embryo' or
the 'new born, innocence' the half child represents from a postcolonial
perspective "the political immaturity, thwarted idealisms, and aborted
nationalism, and the failure of democracy to outlive independence". (Wright,
"Pre-and Post - Modernity" 10). This image of the half child is so suitable to
be applied to the newly independent Nigeria. To quote Derek Wright," in its
ambiguous two-way crossing between unborn and living, living and dead,
the abiku may signity the independent nation's passage into either life or
death; its unfulfilled promise or its perennial entrapment in a cycle of
inherited evils" (10). It is appropriate to quote Gareth Griffiths from A
Double Exile: "Thus the abiku child image unites with all other devices in
the play, including the structural skeleton of the past, present and spirit
worlds of action, as a complex image of the continuity of human limitations
and human frustrations in the developing Nigerian Experience" (152).
Irony
which Demoke emerges as the cleanest., Rola as the Cleaner and Adenebi as
the unchanged one. "The same seaming lightening cleared us all" Later
Demoke is saved by Ogun as he falls fiom heights. Viewed archetypally the
The play has been criticized for its complexity and obscurity caused
by plot-complications and allegorical sketches. But the significant position it
the play will be fulfilled, namely that what is obscure to us 'may seem
perfectly plain to the next generation of readers and play goers'. (Jones, The
writing 34). Further more, A Dance of the Forests has gained a significant
place in the postcolonial literatures. As a work which reinterprets and
reviews the past from the admirable vantage point of the present, (the
gaining of independence) the play defmitely emphasizes the need to
understand and critically evaluate the present, situated as it is in the context
of history. The reinter pretation of colonial history is also attempted in the
play. These two aspects are some of the chief concerns of 'Post colonial
discourses.'
Myth, Literature and African World. The foregoing analysis of the play A
Dance of the Forests reveals Soyinka to be deeply rooted in the Yoruba
world, particularly in the world of Yoruba myth and philosophy. But their
significance lies in this fact that he is more concerned about examining their
relevance to contemporary Nigerian society. More than that, his interest lies
in exploring the possibility of their integrity and assimilation into the modem
world. Above all he uses Yoruba myth of Ogun to interpret and confront
present reality. A Dance of the Forests analyses deeply certain problems
which are particular to Nigeria. But all these problems can be applied to
humanity in general too. Themes like injustice, inhumanity, racism inside
and outside of his immediate environment which is Nigeria are all discussed
in A Dance of the Forests. The intention of the playwright is to show the
tragic plight of man in the totality of his experience. This experience
includes both physical and spiritual and also the past, the present and the
future. As Eldred Jones points out, "A Dance Of The Forests presents a
comprehensive view of man over a massive span of history; it even looks
into the future" (The Writing 32).
The detailed analysis attempted here seeks to prove that the elements
of traditional system are integrated into the writer's vision through the
mediation of a highly conscious art. A Dance of the Forests illustrates in the
best possible way how the materials of traditional cosmology can be used to
articulate an individual point. Yoruba belief in the unity and constant
interaction among the living, the dead and the unborn which are the
metaphysical points of reference and reincarnation become the vehicles to
A reference also has been made to the influence upon Soyinka of the
Brechtian Theatre Theory, the theoretical views which Brecht formulated
concerning epic theatre and a non-Aristotelian dramaturgy: Viewed
archetypal1 A Dance Of The Forests stands as an illustration of Frye's
argument that plot forms of literary genre derive from primitive myths and
rituals that celebrated the victory of one season over another. A Dance of the
Forests like the other major works of Soyinka, The Road and Madmen and
Specialists "has a brilliant exposition of a profoundly pessimistic view of the
human condition." (Roscoe 48). A Dance Of The Forests projects the
political views that Soyinka had and the play proclaims the fust warning to
the natives of Africa against the exploitative nature of their leaders. The